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Those who know me know that I love The Time Traveller's Wife with all my heart. I'm going on my tenth full reading right now from front to back, specifically to refresh myself before seeing the movie which will be coming out on August 14th, featuring Rachel McAdams of Notebook fame and Eric Bana. I've seen the trailer, and I'm not going to lie, it's possibly going to be one of those movie adaptations of the book that you just wish they never made. Look, I hate those people that are always like, "You should read the book it's always better" because that's not true, sometimes the movie is better than the book, but in this case they would have to do something truly Jesus + Goku + Obama + Schwarzenegger + Rocky Balboa miraculous to save this one. I'm really going to hate it when people who have just seen the movie read the book and then it becomes a huge overrated hype when the book came out long ago and deserved your respect when it first came out.



Rant over.

Everytime I read The Time Traveller's Wife, I always notice something different which makes the book profoundly amazing. For example, I just realized how much Henry likes Helen but he never ever gets with her because he stays with Claire. Anyways, I also notice every single time I read the book that I don't understand the German poet Rilke. At all. The Hundreds discussed a tee that hosted a Rilke tribute and The Time Traveller's Wife features Rilke about a half of a dozen times throughout, so at least pop culturally his influence seems to be rather large. Maybe I'm just not as much of an intellect that is required to understand Rilke, or maybe I'm just not aesthetically sensitive enough to acquire this taste, but I have consistently had my difficulties and I wonder if that will ever pass.



I must admit, however, that I recently found myself relating to one of his lines. At one point, Claire and Henry are discussing religion and science. Henry talks about St. Thomas Aquinas, who believed in both Aristotle and angels, and tried to move towards synthesizing order and reason and God, much like I am trying to do so. I have always said I don't believe the two are mutually exclusive, but it's very difficult to find rational evidence beyond faith and conjecture that the two worlds intertwine. Realists want cold, hard evidence that is scientifically based, and aren't willing to believe that the scientific method is just that - a method - and that many things can fall outside the bounds as simple confounds of being unable to be measured by the scientific method. Anything beyond that is just blind faith and deemed to be ignorance, and it really doesn't help that some people truly ARE ignorant about believing in God and haven't really thought it over, which gives people that have mulled it over a bad name. I really do think God is a confound, and a beautiful one. Speculation, perhaps, but hey I'm entitled to an opinion.

Which leads me to Rilke:

Ein jeder Engel ist schrecklich.
Every angel is terrifying.

Maybe only Rilke would think to make the central star of Touched By An Angel and Angels in the Outfield terrifying, as if with one word he could spin an entire stereotype of what an angel should be 180 degrees. What a powerful line, that an angel in all its glory and majesty can be such a powerful symbol for turning our world of apathy and Bill 44s on its ear.